Where should babby be made?

April 8, 2008 7:25 AM

Best NICU in New York City?

A good friend just had a very premature baby. Now that the focus is off mom and on the baby, my task is to help the parents decide if they should stay where they are (St. Luke's-Roosevelt by Columbus Circle) or relocate the baby to another hospital's NICU (specifically New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell).

While personal anecdotes about your experiences at either hospital in this particular situation will certainly be valuable, I'm looking more for answers that point me in the direction of relatively objective, professional assessments of the value of one hospital over the other with regard to their NICUs. I'm certainly willing and able to do research, but Google returns a bewildering array of hits, and I'd like to be able to narrow this down a bit.

Needless to say, this is somewhat urgent, and I would appreciate any help I can get. Thanks very much.

posted by lassie to health (6 comments total)

A quick Google search turned up this 2006 New York magazine article choosing New York–Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell as the best place to give birth in NY, mentioning that it has a Level IV rated NICU (highest). Good luck to your friend. Our twins were 7 weeks premature and I can understand the desire to put the children's care in the best hands possible.
posted by jaimev at 7:47 AM on April 8

I forgot to mention that NICU level ratings are explained in this paper.
posted by jaimev at 7:50 AM on April 8

Lassie, I'm an ex-trainee of the NYPH pediatrics program, so color this with that grain of salt. That being said, the NICU at the Columbia campus of New York-Presbyterian Hospital -- that's the hospital at 168th St., not the Cornell campus at E 68th Street -- is pretty much unparalleled in NYC. I'm not sure what issues your friends' baby faces, though... they need to be very frank in talking to the pediatrician/neonatologist at St. Luke's/Roosevelt Hospital to find out if a higher-level NICU is appropriate for their kiddo. But if there's any glimmer of a need, you're right to think that the child might be better-served at a higher-acuity center, and in NYC that's the Columbia campus of New York-Presby.

To give you what you're seeking about the Columbia NICU: whichever scale or rating system one uses, Columbia's NICU is at the highest level, meaning that they can do full cardiopulmonary bypass and ECMO (extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation), frequently right there in the NICU. The fellowship training program, and the general pediatrics residency program, there is one of the best in the nation, meaning that the staff of the NICU is made up of nurses, nurse practitioners and physician's assistants, residents, fellows, and attendings all operating in teams. The access to specialists (be they surgeons or whatever) is excellent, given that the entire medical staff of the Children's Hospital of NY (Columbia's pediatrics hospital) supports the NICU and the pediatrics residents do around 10-15% of their training in the NICU. The rates of respiratory disease in graduates of the Columbia NICU (which is one of many ways one can look at how a NICU does, given the high rates of respiratory disease in critically-ill and premature neonates) is generally among the lowest nationwide; in my opinion, that's because of the head of respiratory therapy there who is reasonably dogmatic about his approach to the neonates with respiratory disease, something which carries through to the teaching of how to handle the problem at all levels of training and practice in the NICU. I really can't say enough about the place; if I still lived in NYC and my kid needed NICU care, there's no way I would ever, ever consider being anywhere else.

And note that I'm actually surprised to see that article linked about by jaimev saying that Weill Cornell is one of the best; when I trained there, under a decade ago, the NICU at Cornell was small and certainly didn't have ECMO, something specifically mentioned as why that article rated it so highly. With that, I think that NY Mag author just didn't understand the two campuses that make up New York-Presby, since for almost everything pediatrics, the Columbia campus has the higher-acuity abilities and talents.

My email is in my profile, if you or your friends have any other questions or just need general help getting the right info...
posted by delfuego at 10:43 AM on April 8 [1 favorite]

And just for reference, the NICU at Columbia has a dedicated website, it'd seem.
posted by delfuego at 10:51 AM on April 8

Without entering into the fray too much here, I note that Mt. Sinai Hospital is NYC's other major Level 4 NICU and an excellent hospital. When considering options it is the other obvious choice to research.
posted by The Bellman at 11:30 AM on April 8

Thanks to everyone who answered. It is much appreciated.
posted by lassie at 1:20 PM on April 8